his migratory Beloved was about to play him, or rather the
capricious Divinity behind that ideal lady.

A gigantic satire upon the mutations of his nymph during the past twenty
years seemed looming in the distance. A forsaking of the accomplished
and well-connected Mrs. Pine-Avon for the little laundress, under
the traction of some mystic magnet which had nothing to do with
reason--surely that was the form of the satire.

But it was recklessly pleasant to leave the suspicion unrecognized as
yet, and follow the lead.

In thinking how best to do this Pierston recollected that, as was
customary when the summer-time approached, Sylvania Castle had been
advertised for letting furnished. A solitary dreamer like himself, whose
wants all lay in an artistic and ideal direction, did not require such
gaunt accommodation as the aforesaid residence offered; but the spot was
all, and the expenses of a few months of tenancy therein he could well
afford. A letter to the agent was dispatched that night, and in a few
days Jocelyn found himself the temporary possessor of a place which he
had never seen the inside of since his childhood, and had then deemed
the abode of unpleasant ghosts.

2. VI. THE PAST SHINES IN THE PRESENT

It was the evening of Pierston's arrival at Sylvania Castle, a dignified
manor-house in a nook by the cliffs, with modern castellations and
battlements; and he had walked through the rooms, about the lawn,
and into the surrounding plantation of elms, which on this island of
treeless rock lent a unique character to the enclosure. In name, nature,
and accessories the property within the girdling wall formed a complete
antithesis to everything in its precincts. To find other trees between
Pebble-bank and Beal, it was necessary to recede a little in time--to
dig down to a loose stratum of the underlying stone-beds, where a forest
of conifers lay as petrifactions, their heads all in one direction, as
blown down by a gale in the Secondary geologic epoch.

Dusk had closed in, and he now proceeded with what was, after all, the
real business of his sojourn. The two servants who had been left to
take care of the house were in their own quarters, and he went out
unobserved. Crossing a hollow overhung by the budding boughs he
approached an empty garden-house of Elizabethan design, which stood on
the outer wall of the grounds, and commanded by a window the fronts of
the nearest cottages. Among them was the home of t